Guy of Gisburne- The Omnibus

by Toby Venables

  GISBURNE STOPPED UPON the brow of the hill and looked back towards the inn. The two mounted figures—so familiar, even with their faces obscured by distance—were still there. He was glad of a last glimpse.

  The parting had been painful. Pain upon pain. Many times he had asked himself if it was really necessary, if there were not some other way. But, hard as it was, he knew this was how it had to be. He was not her master; he did not want to be. As he had turned to leave, at a loss for words, he had tried not to look upon Mélisande’s face. But of course, he had. And he had seen her pain too.

  It would pass. Mélisande would understand. He had to believe that was true. And then everything would be different.

  For now, though, it felt like the pain would never end.

  Unable to look any longer, he wheeled Nyght about, touched his spurs to the stallion’s flanks, and was gone.

  DE ROSSELEY GAZED after Gisburne’s departing shadow in silence.

  Mélisande tried not to, but failed—and when she looked up and saw the hilltop empty, it seemed all meaning was gone from the world.

  Talos snorted, and Mélisande suddenly remembered the gift, still clutched in her hand.

  The last of him.

  She had no desire to wait. She craved this last vestige, this last evidence of his existence. Not fragile memory, but something she could touch. Something real.

  Holding the silk-wrapped package in her left palm, she tugged away the thin yellow ribbon.

  “So, what will he do?” said de Rosseley, still staring northward to the vacant, darkening hill.

  “Enjoy his rewards,” she said distantly. “Live life.”

  As she spoke, she pulled on the wrapping, the gift jumping and spinning on her palm as the green silk unravelled, until finally the last of the gossamer thin material whipped away, and into her hand fell a short, heavy iron key, its bow heart-shaped.

  She smiled at it. An invitation...

  “But what good are such rewards if you’re alone?” said de Rosseley.

  Mélisande closed her hand about the key. “He’s not alone,” she said. “He never was.”

  Then, heart pounding, she turned her horse and spurred it towards the north.

  EPILOGUE

  The Tower of London

  August 1204

  THE JUG EXPLODED against the wall, spraying those nearest with wine.

  “I know what the problems are!” screamed King John. “Do you think I don’t?”

  Richard de Percy—spattered from head to foot—wiped his eye and looked to Roger de Montbegon, who seemed about to speak, then thought better of it.

  The King looked for something to hurl after it and turned on them again, his eyes wild.

  “Problems, problems, problems!” he howled, flinging his cup, his fury so fierce that the surrounding barons, even armoured as there were, took a step back. “All you ever bring to my door are problems!” With the final word he turned over the table, the few remaining objects upon it—a platter, fruit, a knife—clattering and bouncing across the floor. “Well, let me tell you—I have no shortage of those. I am rich with those. What of answers? Who will bring me them? Does not one among you have the brains for it?” He paused for a moment, his eyes sweeping about the room. “Or is it the will you lack?”

  Then he picked up a chair, and with a roar swung full circle and let it fly. The barons broke apart as it smashed against the council chamber wall, sending splinters of wood high into the air.

  The problems that year had been many.

  In March, Philip, the French king, had taken Château Gaillard. The key to the defence of Normandy and the Lionheart’s pride and joy, it had been deemed impregnable by Richard. He once said he could defend it were its walls made of butter.

  In April, John’s mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, had died. The last of her generation, an anchor during all the storms, she was the power behind three English thrones—and one French one.

  In May, the city of Caen—burial place of the Conqueror—had surrendered to the French without a fight. Caen was one of the two cities upon which control of the region rested; Rouen was the other.

  In June, Rouen—lacking the will to fight for John—had followed suit.

  By August, the whole of Normandy—the once insignificant duchy which had conquered England and Sicily and given John’s father his claim to the English throne—had slipped through John’s fingers.

  And they laughed at him. Lackland, they called him. Softsword.

  Even now, Philip was striking into the very heart of Angevin territory, and was poised not only to take Poitou, but Anjou itself. The mighty empire that had been his father Henry’s lifelong labour was unravelling before John’s eyes, and it seemed there was nothing he could do to stop it.

  It should have been possible. He had the forces, he had the will. But everywhere he was betrayed.

  After the siege at Nottingham and the final reconciliation with Richard, he had served his brother loyally, right to the end. And while he was never the great military genius that his adored brother had been—his interests were too diverse, his tastes too broad—he had demonstrated he knew well enough how to deploy men, and how to lead them, too. He had shown it at Évreux, and at Gamaches. He’d shown it when he’d brought the English army within striking distance of Paris, and returned with the captured Bishop of Beauvais as a prize. He had shocked them all.

  But how many of those now around him remembered?

  Not one. It suited them to forget. In the relentless quest to demean him and his predecessor—to make the brilliant day of the dead king the brighter by extinguishing all light in the dark night that followed—even these achievements were now ascribed to Saint Richard the Lionheart.

  John turned slowly around the chamber in the awkward silence, his eyes focused on nothing. “Get out,” he muttered.

  De Percy took a step forward. “My lord, if we—”

  John turned on him like a wild dog.

  “GET—OOOOOUT!” He held on to the last syllable until his breath was spent, his mouth dripping venom, his face so red it looked fit to burst. Half the company had quit the room before the roar ended.

  He stood, then, in the emptied chamber, gradually recovering his breath. The Angevin temper... It was known, even celebrated. Richard had it; his father Henry had it. Quite clearly, he had it too. It was the result, so it was said, of the Angevin dynasty being descended from the Devil. Old King Henry had liked that story. That being the case, how could anyone blame John for these histrionics? They were his inheritance.

  He chuckled to himself. Spying a flask of wine that had escaped the mayhem by the fire, he hunted around for a cup—booting a pomegranate across the floor as he did so—found one, filled it, and gulped it down. That eased things a little. He filled it again. No, they couldn’t blame him; but they would anyway.

  A sound made him stop, the cup at his mouth.

  No servant would enter so soon after his outburst—they knew better. For a moment he thought it must be that bastard de Percy coming creeping back. If anyone would it was he, with some new argument, some new complication, some new problem. But de Percy, like the others, had left by the southwest stair. The sound—a footstep, he was sure of it—had come from the northern end of the chamber.

  John squinted through the arches that joined this chamber to the next, trying to penetrate the shadows there. He could see nothing; hear nothing. And then one of the shadows stirred and began to approach.

  It was black from head to foot, and immediately familiar.

  “Welcome back to the White Tower, Sir Guy,” he said with a smile. Gisburne stopped and stood before him, his head slightly bowed. John looked about him at the broken, scattered objects. “Sorry about the mess,” he said.

  The knight was dressed in the familiar, black horsehide coat, although this one looked brand new. A leather patch covered his lost left eye. He seemed hardly to have aged.

  John chuckled to himself. “Well, I know better than to ask ho
w you got in...”

  “Do not let anyone blame the guards on duty,” said Gisburne.

  “I’ll make certain of it. It’s my castle now, I can do as I like.”

  Gisburne walked over to the table, righted it, then placed a heavy gold ring upon its top. John stepped forward to investigate.

  “God’s teeth,” he said. “This is my personal seal. Where did you get it?”

  “You gave it to me.”

  “Did I?” John raised his eyebrows, struggling to recall. If he had, it must have been years ago. A decade, at least. “You could have been issuing writs and edicts in my name all this time...” Then he laughed to himself. “But you never would, of course. Truth be told, it was probably safer in your hands than mine.”

  He gave a mirthless laugh, then gestured to the chaos of destruction about the chamber—which only now struck him as a symbol of the realm as a whole. “You’re not quite catching me at my best.” He gave a deep, shuddering sigh. “Normandy has decided they prefer to bend over for the French King than to fight for me, my barons openly snipe and criticise and not even my mother is around to quell them.”

  “It’s worse than that,” said Gisburne flatly.

  He smiled. “Well, it’s good to see you, too.” Turning the ring idly in his fingers, he stared for a moment at the knight’s face, half in shadow. A thousand questions jostled in his mind—but just one fought its way to the front.

  “I said I would never call upon your services,” said John, “and I never have. Not in all these years. And in all that time you have never come to me. Why now?”

  Gisburne lifted his head. “Because you’re going to need me,” he said.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  A GREAT MANY remarkable people have contributed in some way the Hunter of Sherwood trilogy—from historians and novelists to re-enactors and makers of bits of medieval kit. There are some—chance encounters at one event or another—whose names I never knew, and others who never realised they were contributing (a lucky escape for them; plausible deniability and all that). All are due my gratitude, nonetheless. So, accepting the near inevitability that some will be missed, I would like to thank:

  Stuart Orme, Chris Carr, Dominic Sewell, Ian Flint, David S. Baker, Dara Hellman, Dan Melia, Gillian Pollack, Allen W. Wright, Robert Fortunaso, James L. Matterer, Alison Weir, Tom Asbridge, W. L. Warren, Bernard Cornwell, Imad ad-Din al-Isfahani, William FitzStephen, Bridget Clifford at Royal Armouries, Emily Fildes at Historic Royal Palaces, English Heritage, John and Anita Van Hassel of Windrose Armoury, Nev Wilson and everyone at Avalon Archers, Nick Winter at Arbalist Armoury, The Longbow Shop, Kristoff Mussolini of Irondale Longbows, Dave Greenhalgh (Dave the Moneyer), Peter Crossman of Crossman Crafts, the legendary Tod of Tod’s stuff—maker of Gisburne’s eating knife—and most of all my long-suffering family, my equally long-suffering editor David Moore, and Jason Kingsley, for horse sense and for first having the idea to make Gisburne the hero.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  TOBY VENABLES is a novelist, screenwriter and journalist who also lectures in Cambridge, England. He inhabits various time periods and occasionally writes about zombies. A descendant of the Counts of Blois and Champagne, he numbers the slayer of the Moston dragon among his ancestors, but despite being given a longbow at the age of twelve has so far managed not to kill anyone. In 2001 he won the Keats-Shelley Memorial Prize, and squandered the proceeds. Hood is his fourth novel.

  THE SHIP OF THE DEAD

  Northern Europe, 976 AD. Bjólf and the viking crew of the ship Hrafn flee up an unknown river after a bitter battle, only to find themselves in a bleak land of pestilence. The dead don’t lie down, but become draugr – the undead – returning to feed on the flesh of their kin. Terrible stories are told of a dark castle in a hidden fjord, and of black ships that come raiding with invincible draugr berserkers. And no sooner has Bjólf resolved to leave, than the black ships appear...

  Now stranded, his men cursed by the contagion of walking death, Bjólf has one choice: fight his way through a forest teeming with zombies, invade the castle and find the secret of the horrific condition – or submit to an eternity of shambling, soulless undeath!

  “Toby Venables wields his pen all sword-like and delivers quirky flashes of fearless text.”

  BBC.co.uk

  www.abaddonbooks.com

  AFTER THE WORLD DIED, THE LEGEND WAS REBORN.

  When civilisation shuddered and died, Robert Stokes lost everything, including his wife and his son. The ex-cop retreated into the woods near Nottingham, to live off the land and wait to join his family. As the world descended into a new Dark Age, he turned his back on it all.

  The foreign mercenary and arms dealer De Falaise sees England is ripe for conquest. He works his way up the country, forging an army and pillaging as he goes. When De Falaise arrives at Nottingham and sets up his new dominion, Robert is drawn reluctantly into the resistance. From Sherwood he leads the fight and takes on the mantle of the world’s greatest folk hero.

  The Hooded Man and his allies will become a symbol of freedom, a shining light in the horror of a blighted world, but he can never rest: De Falaise is only the first of his kind.

  This omnibus collects the novels Arrowhead, Broken Arrow and Arrowland, with a new introduction by editor Jonathan Oliver. The ebook edition also exclusively collects the stories ‘The Servitor,’ ‘Perfect Presents,’ and ‘Signs and Portents.’

  www.abaddonbooks.com

  Sir Dodinal the Savage is more at home in the wild forest than in the tilting yard or the banquet hall. Keenly attuned to the natural world, but burdened with a terrible rage, he turns his back on Camelot to find peace, or a just death.

  In a quiet village on the Welsh border, Dodinal believes he may have finally found a home, but the village is struck by child-stealing raiders from the hills, and he must take up arms once again in his new friends’ aid. His quest will take him into the belly of darkness, as the terrible secret hidden in the hills comes to light...

  www.abaddonbooks.com